Britain's Best Home Cook prompts harshest comments yet

From Digital Spy

We've had lots of soup (accidentally) and last week gave us many, many different kinds of pie (on purpose) but tonight's episode of Britain's Best Home Cook was the best yet, as each of the contestants served up a true British classic.

Yep, it's roast week. The contestants could choose any meat they liked and it had to be served with a potato dish and two different kinds of vegetable, with Yorkshire puddings being optional.

(Although, as we all know, you should always go for a Yorkshire pudding.)

With seven cooks left to battle it out, each contestant made sure they did what they could to stand out from the crowd. But, when it came to the judging, Mary Berry, Dan Doherty and Chris Bavin were not shy about making their opinions on what makes the ultimate roast dinner known.

Tobi served salt baked roast chicken, prompting a debate over whether you can serve a "baked" chicken for a roast dinner.

"It's definitely not roasted," Dan said. "It's kind of counter productive to steam a chicken, and then crisp some chicken skins separately because we'd like roasted chicken skins. That's just roasted chicken."

Tobi also served his Yorkshire with cherries, which had quite a few viewers scratching their heads:

Meanwhile, Pippa served up Hasselback potatoes, which proved another sticking point for the judges.

"We had a bit of a disagreement over whether they constitute roast potatoes or not, you've divided the camp," Chris began, although Mary said they were a "lovely" addition to the dish.

But then along came Dan once again to offer semantics in the way of a roast dinner, as Pippa half-cooked her shoulder of lamb in a pressure cooker.

"The lamb tastes tender and is beautiful... but again, a pressure cooker's a good answer, but it's not a roast," he argued. "The challenge is ultimate roast."

Harsh comments, yes, but it seems viewers were completely here for Dan's "purist" roast dinner thoughts:

Once again, following the Ultimate challenge, the second challenge asked everyone to cook something with another key ingredient, which was crab.

But, at the end of both rounds, not everyone had done enough to impress the judges, leaving Cyrus and Tobi to face the elimination task, which this week asked them to make Apple Charlotte, complete with chantilly cream and butterscotch sauce.

And after a gruelling 45 minutes, the judges opted to send home Cyrus, who said that being on the show had been a "blast".

"I'm very sad to be leaving. I've loved the competition," he added. "It's unbelievably hard work. It's stressful, you go through the emotional wringer, but in a fantastic way. You meet brilliant people, you learn so much and it is so fun."

Britain's Best Home Cook continues next Thursday (June 1) at 8pm on BBC One.

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